China’s New Xiongan Economic Zone to Reflect Yin and Yang

The newly announced Xiongan economic zone near China’s capital city of Beijing will reflect the traditional philosophy of yin and yang, or a status of harmony with nature, making use of water and man-made hills, according to a chief designer.

The central government in April revealed its plan to create the Xiongan New Area, a zone that is being designed to better coordinate the development of the capital city with Hebei province and Tianjin in northern China. It is considered a milestone project comparable with the creation of the Shanghai Pudong New Area in East China and the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in South China decades ago in the country’s efforts to turn into an open and market-oriented economy.

Urban planners are expected to hand in their first draft of their blueprint of Xiongan to the central government by the end of this month, said Xu Kuangdi, head of a national expert’s committee for the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, at an urban planning forum in Beijing earlier this week.

The blueprint is being drafted by a working group composed of six teams from prestigious institutions, including the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design and Tsinghua University. There is also a plan-assessment committee that includes more than 70 experts in geography, energy and ecology who will review various plans drafted by the working group, Xu said.

The first phase of Xiongan will be built in a 30-square-kilometer area that occupies parts of the counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin, which contain more than 300 square kilometers of wetland called Baiyangdian.

The mud and earth in the wetlands will be dug out, making the water deeper. The earth will be piled up in the northern part of Xiongan to create hills and a tilted landscape from which water can naturally flow, Xu said.

“This fits into the traditional Chinese thinking of yin and yang that complement each other,” Xu said. “The man-made town (on the land) is yang, and the natural and green water is yin.”

He added that the capital city of Lin’an of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127

1279) had a similar design, as the city, known today as Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, stood by the famous West Lake.

Authorities will also divert water from reservoirs along Taihang Mountain near Beijing to enrich the water system in Xiongan. As a result, Sinopec’s Beijing Yanshan Co. (Yanshan Petro), a major industrial consumer of the reservoir water, will be moved to the city of Tangshan, more than 200 km to the east, Xu said.

Stabilizing Baiyangdian’s wetland eco-system is one of the tasks the urban planners need to do while designing the new city of Xiongan, he said.

Xiongan is expected to share some “non-capital” functions of Beijing, including higher-education and research institutions, administrative bodies of some state-owned companies, and some new-industry firms, in a bid to help boost Hebei’s economy, experts said.

Xu also explained the cultural reason behind choosing the location of Xiongan for the new economic zone.

Chinese traditional thinking prefers to choose a place along Beijing’s central axis, which goes through Tiananmen Square from north to south. In the southern part of the axis lies the county-level city of Bazhou. But geological conditions aren’t appropriate for a new city there because there is a geological fracture beneath Bazhou, Xu said.

Experts then moved the vertical axis to 1,710-year-old Tanzhe Temple more than 30 km in the west suburb of Beijing. The southern part of the axis goes through what is now the Xiongan New Area.

Contact reporter Wu Gang (gangwu@caixin.com)